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In the field of semiconductors, electrons and holes are usually referred to as free carriers, or
simply carriers, because it is these particles which are responsible for carrying the electric
current. The number of carriers is an important property of a semiconductor, as this determines
its electrical conductivity. In order to determine the number of carriers, we need some of the
basic results of statistical mechanics. The most important result in this regard is the Fermi-Dirac
(FD) distribution function
This function gives the probability that an energy level E is occupied by an electron when the
system is at temperature T. The function is plotted versus E in figure below
Here we see that, as the temperature rises, the unoccupied region below the Fermi level Ep
becomes longer, which implies that the occupation of high energy states increases as the
temperature is raised, a conclusion which is most plausible, since increasing the temperature
raises the overall energy of the system. Note also that f (E): ] at the Fermi level (E: E) regardless
of the temperature. That is, the probability that the Fermi level is occupied is always equal to
onehalf.
In semiconductors it is the tail region of the FD distribution which is of of particular interest. In
that region the inequality ( E Ev ) k BT holds true and one may thereby neglect the term unity
in the-denominator. The FD distribution then reduces to the form
It is useful to calculate the equilibrium concentration of holes p. The distribution function fh for
holes is related to the electron distribution function fe by fh = 1 - fe, because a hole is the absence
of an electron. We have
If the holes near the top of the valence band behave as particles with effective mass mh, the
density of hole states is given by
where Ev is the energy at the valence band edge. So the hole concentration would be given by;
Therefore,
The intrinsic carrier concentration depends exponentially on Eg/2kBT, where Eg is the energy
gap. The Fermi level as measured from the top of the valence band,
If mh =me, then and the Fermi level is in the middle of the forbidden gap.
where n and p are the concentrations of electrons and holes. In the drift velocity of a charge q
was found to be v = qτE/m, whence